Finally a Simple Way to Build Business Apps in the Cloud?

Simplicité Software is available in the United States (and the rest of the world), through the IBM Bluemix platform. Simplicité is a development platform designed at developing business apps.

What’s new, could you ask? Well, I spent a lot of time dealing with business-app oriented languages, like Informix 4GL and their mutant clones. The value proposition of those language is really appealing but they don’t fit in our modern world. I tried myself at turning Java into such a business language during my Awoma days, but it turned out it is difficult to sell. On the other hand, Simplicité (simplicity in French) is simple and well suited for the modern platforms and methodology of development.

As an example of this simplicity, Simplicité was used by General Electric when it acquired Alstom. They built an inventory software dedicated to track their IT “stuff”. As a result, in a couple of months, a version is out, where using classic development tools & methodology, you’d be happy to have a database schema in such a short time! That was about 2 years ago and the project manager in charge fo the project at GE / Alstom estimates they saved about $9m to date.

So yeah, I agree, getting to a new tool always presents some risks, but the company is 10 years old, their platform is mature, and it’s now backed by IBM on Bluemix. Of course, as enterprise needs and requirements are different, you can use Simplicité on premise or in a private cloud. The company was created 10 years ago by Francois Genestin and Thomas Repolt.

If you are thinking about your ROI on development projects, I think you should give a look at Simplicité Software.